Question

Refractive index of diamond is 2.42 and that of glass is 1.5. Calculate the sine of critical angle for the diamond-glass surface.

Answer 1

Given:
Refractive index of diamond, $n_1=2.42$
Refractive index of glass,$n_2=1.5$

Let the critical angle for the diamond glass interface be c.

Using the formula of critical angle,
$sinc=\frac{n_2}{n_1}$
$sinc\approx 0.6$

The value of sine of critical angle is about 0.6 for the glass-diamond interface. The corresponding critical angle (c) comes out to be about ${38}^{\circ }$.